Literature concepts and applications

¶ … Dreamer and the Dream

Emily Webb was a typical young woman who dreamed about becoming a great lady. Diana Spencer was an exceptional young woman who became a great lady. That is where their similarities end. Diana married her prince and Emily married her farmer. Emily married the boy next door. Diana married a reserved royal. Diana was a real person. Emily was a character in a play. However, both of these women lived and died while we watched from the balcony.

When Diana Spencer's life was made public, she was already a princess-to-be. She strolled with her prince arm-in-arm for photographers who greedily snapped pictures that would be published around the world. It was evident that she was in love with her prince and dazzled by her new life. However, she was in unfamiliar territory, and about to enter a reality that was totally foreign to her. Diana lived the fairy tale. She instantaneously evolved from middle-class kindergarten teacher to international celebrity. Emily would have loved to be in Diana's shoes. When we meet Emily, she is a young schoolgirl, bright, pretty-enough, and ordinary. She lives next door to the boy who will ultimately become her husband. She has known him since childhood. She is familiar with everything about her life, but longs for the extraordinary. She is comfortable in her surroundings, happy-enough, but often indifferent. Unlike Diana, she was never overwhelmed by her circumstances. Her life was predictable and her death in childbirth was not uncommon in the time that she lived. Diana's life was unpredictable, and her death was shocking. It is only after she dies that Emily realizes that life is wondrous and every moment is precious.

We must remember, however, that Emily Webb's environment is that of fiction. She is an actress reciting lines. She portrays a normal, small town girl who goes to school, falls in love, gets married, has babies, and dies. Throughout the production, the omnipresent Stage Manager has to remind the audience that they are watching a play; that it is not real life. Antithetically, Princess Diana lived a life that had the appearance of a dream. She falls in love with the Prince of Wales, has a magnificent storybook wedding, enters a life of pomp and circumstance, moves into the castle, and gives birth to two princes in the following three years. She probably had to remind herself that all of this was real. However, as time passed, her life progressed from real to surreal. Diana's dream life became a bad dream, a nightmare of and self-deprecation, deceit, divorce, and humiliation. Emily's simple, happy, ordinary life was a dream that Diana was never able to realize